Real Mideast Peace is an Elusive Dream

by Eric Margolis

NEW YORK -- A former British officer once told me he
found a rock near Damascus during the war on which a
Roman soldier of the XII Legion had scratched, `Syrians
are horrible people.'

Two thousand years later, most of Syria's neighbors
still feel the same way. Yet after a decade of
isolation, Damascus is once again center stage in the
ongoing Mideast drama thanks to recent, US-brokered
peace negotiations between Israel and Syria. The peace
deal is expected to cost American tax-payers around $20
to $40 billion. The Syrians, as always, are proving
tough, obdurate, difficult and clever, as befits a
people whose capital, Damascus, is the world's oldest
continually inhabited city.

Israel is offering to return part or all of the
strategic Golan Heights which it seized in the 1967 War
in exchange for a comprehensive peace treaty with Syria
and the unchallenged withdrawal of Israeli occupation
forces from southern Lebanon. Such a deal would confirm
Syrian control of Lebanon, which was part of historic
Syria until detached by France in the 1920's. Jordan and
whatever new Palestinian state that emerges would, in
turn, become de facto Israeli protectorates.

Golan would be demilitarized; some or all the militant
Jewish settlers from Brooklyn and Russia on the Heights
evicted; and the 500,000 Syrians driven out of Golan by
Israel in 1967 returned to their homes. Most important,
Damascus would no longer be in range of Israeli
artillery on Golan.

Peace talks have been suspended for two weeks as the two
sides deal with the thorny questions of water rights,
borders, surveillance, and population relocation.
Israeli PM Ehud Barak's courageous attempt to achieve a
peace with Israel's most bitter enemy has only a 50%
chance of success - and perhaps even less now as
opposition grows in Israel among Russian emigrants and
religious parties, and from hard liners in the Diaspora.
Even a peace treaty between Jerusalem and Damascus is no
guarantee of future Mideast peace. Like many Arab
nations, Syria is inherently unstable. President Hafez
Asad has ruled this nation of 16.4 million since he
seized power in a coup 30 years ago. Asad is an Alawi, a
reclusive religious minority from the north that
comprise 11% of Syria's multi-ethnic population.
Orthodox Sunni Muslims consider Alawis and their first
cousins, Druzes, as heretics.

Asad controls the military, the ruling Ba'ath Party, and
eight security services by keeping Alawis and relatives
in key positions. The ailing Asad is grooming his second
son, Bashar, to succeed him. But Syria's economy is on
the rocks. The once powerful 316,000-man Syrian armed
forces are stuck with obsolete, 1970's era Soviet arms,
crippled by shortages, and two full generations of
technology behind Israel. The recent Israeli-Turkish
military alliance against Syria poses an insurmountable
threat.

As a result, Asad has opened peace talks as a way of
gaining western investment and access to modern weapons
for the military that keeps him and his clansmen in
power. But few think that Asad's amiable son has the
ruthlessness or charisma to run the draconian Syrian
police state after his father's demise or
incapacitation.

This past week, anti-Asad demonstrations and arrests
occurred in Homs and Hama, where the conservative Sunni
Muslim Brotherhood remains powerful. In 1982, the
Brotherhood rose in revolt in Hama against Asad's
socialist regime. In three weeks of savage fighting,
Asad's troops put down the rebellion, killing some
10,000 Islamic rebels. Many Sunnis seethe with revenge
against the Alawi-dominated regime.

A post-Asad Syria might soon disintegrate into civil war
between military and security forces, Shia, Sunni and
Alawi militants, and regional chieftains. In the 1920's,
the influential Zionist theorist Jabotinsky (whose
thinking influences Israel's Likud Party today) urged
Jews of Palestine to smash fragile Syria into fragments
and so seize the entire Fertile Crescent. If post-Asad
Syria does splinter, Israel would be sorely tempted to
intervene -- as it did in Lebanon during the
1980's. Lebanon proved a disaster for Israel, but the
chance to permanently eliminate Israel's chief enemy and
only remaining military opponent might prove
irresistible.

Post-Saddam Iraq is even likelier to dissolve into chaos
than neighboring Syria. If Israeli forces are deployed
in southern Syria, they need only move 500 kms to reach
Iraq's northern oil fields around Mosul. Israel and
Turkey -- neither of whom have oil and who both
avidly crave it -- may already have joint
contingency plans to partition northern Iraq. Turkey for
certain plans to annex northern Iraq if the opportunity
arises. Oil would transform Turkey into a major power.

Even if Syria and Iraq somehow remain intact, formerly
isolated Israel is increasingly likely to be drawn into
Mideast rivalries as an active participant. Peace with
its Arab neighbors simply means Israel would be free to
join them as a full-time player in their intrigues. One
can easily foresee Israel, the Prussia of the Mideast,
in shifting alliances with its neighbors, i.e. Israel
and Syria v. Iraq; Israel and Saudi v. Syria; Turkey and
Israel v. Iraq and Syria; and so on.

This prospect means Israel may be destined to steadily
lose its identity as a purely Jewish, westernized state
and become a full-fledged Levantine nation. Just, in
fact, what happened to the 12th Century European
Crusader states.

[Eric Margolis is a syndicated foreign affairs columnist and
broadcaster based in Toronto, Canada.]

---
[So it is clear that the invasion of Lebanon was initiated NOT TO DRIVE THE
PALESTINIAN FIGHTERS FROM SOUTH LEBANON, but rather to gain control over the
primary source of water.--William W. Baker, "Theft of
a Nation," Jireh Publications (1982), p. 153]